Is your association at risk from a cyber attack?

Jun

Cody Hobbs
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cyber security . http . https . security .

Your association’s website contains a lot of valuable information, information that you definitely want to keep safe. Especially if you offer onsite event registration (and lets not forget online payment of member dues). You want to keep your members private information safe, but how do you do that? Here are three pices of advice that every association should follow:

1: Asses your liability: In this age, everyone is a target for a cyber attack, but not all have the same bulls-eye. The bigger your member base is, the bigger of a target you might have. But size isn’t the only factor: associations that deal with potentially sensitive topics may be at more risk.

2: Pay attention to that thing that comes before the three W’s. Quick, think of a website. Chances are, you thought of Google, and chances are you only thought about the “google.com” portion of it. But enter it into your browser, and look at the whole thing. Notice the https:// that comes before it. The “Http” part stands for “hyper text transfer” — that basically means the transfer of information from one computer to another. The “s” that follows on most websites stands for “secure”, and means that all data being transferred is encrypted. You might think that all websites institute this, but you’d be wrong. Check your associations URL right now, and make sure it’s “https”, and not just “http”. Not having a secure data transfer could be putting you at huge risk!

3: Make sure you tech provider understands security. This might sound like a no brainier, and that’s the problem. So many people assume that just because they’re working with a tech company that they’re automatically adept in cyber security. But that isn’t the case. Some tech companies are great when it comes to design, and functionality, but are behind on security. Never be afraid to ask, especially if you feel that your association might be especially at risk.

Of course there’s more to it than these three cardinal rules, but having a grasp on these three things could mean the difference between staying secure, and having a costly cyber breach.